Monday, October 23, 2006

Philosoraptor Named Worst Blog in World!!!!Oh...God...I...I've dreamt of this day for so long... Excuse me. I...I promised myself I wouldn't cry. Don't cry, dammit, don't cry...I never really thought...never even hoped to dream, actually...that I'd get an honor like this. I mean, of all the blogs in the blogosphere! It's, well, it's really just...amazing!But I didn't get here by myself. I want to thank, well, my mother and father, of course...and all my logic teachers...and, of course, God.And thank you, oh mighty Atrios, for I couldn't have done it without you, either. And this title...well, just believe me when I say: it means a lot coming from you.{throws kisses to crowd, heads to after party}

Gaah! I got around to reading the original post, and it seems you attracted more than your fair share of dittoheads in the comments. It's one of the best thing about this blog--generally there are not too many comments to read.

Generally when a blog hits 20 comments/post, it's time to stop reading them. Only Kos--with Scoop--has a reasonable method of managing the scaling problem, and even that doesn't work all that well.

Also: congratulations on getting such august recognition from one of the blogosphere's kingmakers. You must be so proud... :-P

i agree that atrios was speaking in irony, and Winston misunderstood it (probably.) But it's the exception that proves the rule. Winston posted a detailed critique of atrios' methods and commenters, and atrios responded with a silly one liner-as if that's a sufficient argument--and his commenters flooded the zone with inanity.

That's a pretty effective proof of the point that Winston was trying to make in the first place...

Cribbed this from another anonymous on another of your threads because it captures my thoughts pretty well:

"From another friendly commenter at Washington Monthly (Jimm), let me just second the notion that Eschaton is good for what it aims to be. I've always checked in on Atrios, and not for commentary but for snark and links (usually coming together).

Occasionally he actually does weigh in with an extended (for him) op-ed, and generally I find them well thought out and brutally honest. I don't always agree, but usually do, since we seem to share an aversion for bullshit and willingness to defy the status quo that is the foundation for at least one school of progressive, pragmatic, liberal thought, best characterized by the near-complete (never perfect) absence of "apologetics" (i.e. a need to justify an argument, behavior, or ideology out of loyalty and/or cognitive dissonance).

The best test for this "style" or "school" is to examine your opinions, say about the war in Iraq, and see how much of them are moulded by the fact that we actually did go to war with Iraq. Keep in mind that you can't really justify an action after the fact unless that's the basis for your action (i.e. results-based utilitarianism...we're going to invade Iraq and the better outcome will justify the decision). You can try to mitigate the damage if your justification proves wrong by showing other benefits, but this is not a justification (and you can also "pile on" benefits to make yourself look better overall if your justification proves worthy).

Also, especially in the case with war (considering the human tragedy and gross violations of human dignity involved), if those who are actually pulling the trigger on the decision are using one justification, you can't honestly support the war for other justifications, since you're supporting a different war that would employ different strategies and methods (unless you are sure that "your" war and "their" war are wedded enough in objectives and motives that you can ignore the differences)."

For more thoughtful bitter and sarcastic commentary I highly recommend this guy as opposed to Atrios:

Thing is, A, this probably isn't true. If country X threatens, say, to destroy us, and country Y wants regime change in X, then there are all kinds of circumstances under which we might support Y, even if we don't share all their goals. E.g. Stalin sought territory and power, but we supported him against Hitler. We sought to defend ourselves and make Europe a better place: Stalin shared neither goal, yet it was reasonable for us to support him.

Winston, your post on Atrios was silly and demonstrated your weak links far more effectively than his (and he posted not one but two updates and clarifications that took comments seriously).

At any rate, your post brought to mind a parody I once saw of Alistair Cook introducing the Masterpiece Theater rendition of "Tutti Frutti." Yep. The Little Richard song.

It was a lot of verbiage that could not possibly have elucidated the meaning of the original because it was so devoid of context and intentionally obtuse. Okay, the "intentionally" was inserted to give you the benefit of the doubt. You can do better than that.

No, Winston, we can't. You've written more verbiage about Atrios in the last few days than you've written about *other subjects* in the last six months (or so it seems). Your quest for (faux) civility always annoyed me but you did used to have some interesting thoughts. I wonder where they went. Bye bye.